Written by Christie Crawford
Clarksville, TN – For close to 20 years the Clarksville Writers Conference has been held at Austin Peay State University in celebration of the rich writing tradition of the area.
Considered the birthplace of Southern Renaissance writers, Clarksville, and its surrounding area has been home to such writers as Robert Penn Warren, Evelyn Scott, Caroline Gordon, and Allen Tate, to name a few. Similar to New York’s Algonquin Table, these writers met at the Ben Folly homestead on the Cumberland (Tate and Gordon’s home) to review and critique each other’s work.
This year’s conference, named Tell Us a Story, featured Spartanburg, SC’s Susan Beckham Zarenda, an English teacher for 33 years whose book Bells for Eli was published in 2020. Bells for Eli was a Gold Medalist in Best First Book – Fiction at the 2021 Independent Publisher Book Awards and received many other accolades. The conference featured presentations and workshops with fifteen authors. The four-day event began June 5th with a banquet, reception, and book signings.
One writer with whom I’m personally familiar is fellow Third Thursday online book club member Janis Daly. She is a historical fiction author who traveled from Boston to present on two subjects: Paths to Publication and Great Great Grandfather, Tell Me A Story – An Examination and Celebration of Family History. Daly, a former marketing and sales executive, stumbled onto her book The Unlocked Path after a genealogy search revealed that her great-great-grandfather, William S. Peirce, Esquire, was one of the founders of the Women’s Medical College in Philadelphia – the first of its kind in the country.
Although a book had been published on the history of the college, Daly was able to uncover further research, including letters and information on the exceptional students at the college. What inspired Daly was the courage and discipline it took these female students, many of whom left their home countries, to attend schooling for a career in medicine, at the time a traditionally-male profession.
Daly’s presentation gave clues on how to conduct genealogy research, how to be true to a time period, and how to create depth in characters in order to create a good story. An interesting part of the reviewing process is to include sensitivity readers, which can be fellow writers or particular readers who represent a profession or culture. Daly mentions that a reader should pick up a historical fiction novel to “learn much about history not taught in schools” and to read books that are “pulling pieces of history out of the shadows”.
Daly’s book received much acclaim. It was named #1 Release in Historical Fiction, received an Honorable Mention for General Fiction from the New England Book Festival Awards, and was also a finalist for the Goethe Award for Late Historical Fiction from the Chanticleer International Book Awards. Why she chose historical fiction as her genre was three-pronged.
First, to write what you know – the old adage of all writers. In this case, Daly used her research to create as she says “a platform to reach readers looking to escape into different eras, where they can experience sights, sounds, and sensations of the past. And not only escape but learn.”
Second, the popularity of the historical fiction genre. Peruse any of the major book sales rankings. You will find historical fiction right up there. Look at the success of Kristin Hannah, who started out as a purely romance writer but turned to historical events with her works The Nightingale, The Four Winds, and her latest, The Women. Other popular novels include Lessons in Chemistry, All the Light We Cannot See, and Daisy Jones and the Six. Many of these have translated into successful movies and series because of their compelling storytelling and historical depictions.
And it doesn’t stop there. Pulitzer Prizes in Fiction have squared themselves in the genre with Trust by Hernan Diaz and Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver. The genre itself has been awarded winners over time, including classics like Gone with the Wind, Beloved, and Les Miserables. Daly states that more books in the genres are being introduced to many schools’ curriculum. For instance, Jamie Ford’s Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet is currently being used in discussions of Japanese internment camps during WW II.
Third, she wanted to challenge herself. Not merely satisfied with writing a fictional account on the women’s medical college, Daly rose up to the challenge of presenting a compelling story, along with the attention to detail necessary to stay true to historical fiction. The actual definition of historical fiction is a category of book in which a fictional plot exists but in the setting of historical events. In her experience with editors, keeping the line between fact and fiction is one that an author must decide in order to “help the story move forward, as well as consider its impact on the character.” She says she often pauses and asks, ‘are the facts relevant to the story’.
Daly quotes fellow writer Lisa Wingate that “society suffers from a history deficient disorder.” She explains that many events that have been “glossed over, while being minor aspects of history, helped shape it.” We, as a society, haven’t learned about them, and there have been recent troubling events to erase history, also part of the disorder. Her favorite authors include Kristin Hannah, Kate Quinn, Lisa See, and Martha Hall Kelly, not only for their extraordinary abilities to craft a story but also for their equally strong skills in researching their books. Whichever author you choose to read, remember the distinction that in history, you read to understand, but in historical fiction, you read to be moved.
Next year’s Clarksville Writers Conference will be held June 4th-6th, 2025, featuring Nashville author Margaret Renkl along with her brother – APSU art professor Billy Renkl.
